Ingrid Andress, Caitlyn Smith, Lainey Wilson showcase star-making songs in joint performance
With 31 years of professional experience and four number-one singles on various Billboard charts between them, the lineup for Monday evening's Country Music Association fundraiser — "An Intimate Evening with Caitlyn Smith, Ingrid Andress & Lainey Wilson" — showed the genre's slow movements toward gender equity and inclusion are working.
Cannon Falls, Minnesota, native Caitlyn Smith arrived in Nashville in 2010 at roughly the same time as Baskin, Louisiana-born Lainey Wilson. The genesis of the tandem's Music City careers coincided with only two women — Miranda Lambert and Carrie Underwood — as female staples of mainstream country radio. In the first two decades of the 21st century, the number of men-to-women being spun on terrestrial country radio increased by nearly 400 percent (2-to-1 to 9.7-to-1, per Jada Watson's research released in April 2019).
Between the 17 different women (including Wilson, plus Lambert and Underwood) who have topped Billboard's Country Airplay charts since April 2019 and the quality of the 12 songs played in Franklin, the notion that such a profound imbalance is shifting is becoming steadily more obvious.
Wilson is nominated for six 2022 CMA Awards (including Female Vocalist of the Year, New Artist of the Year and Song of the Year) at the ceremony scheduled for Nov. 9 at Bridgestone Arena. At the sold-out Franklin Theatre fundraiser, she sang her new track "Watermelon Moonshine", which will be on her album "Bell Bottom Country" out Oct. 28 and part of her recurring guest appearances on the fifth season of the Paramount Network program "Yellowstone," which begins airing on Nov. 13.
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As for Smith, she's already a well-regarded songwriter who has worked with Country Music Hall of Famers like Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers, Grand Ole Opry members like Garth Brooks and Lady A, and pop stars like Meghan Trainor. Plus, she sings the theme song to Fox's country music drama "Monarch." With her album "Low," expected to land next year, she will complete a tandem of albums (alongside this year's "High") that chronicle her most personal work yet.
She said that though her enneagram personality test listed her as a "type 3 person" ("defined by their desire to be significant and to distinguish themselves through their achievements"), she was also a "confident songwriter" who used that skill to allow her to "play a character in a song and hide." She said of late, her greatest growth as an artist was in learning how to expose herself emotionally to achieve a greater connection with country music fans.
She sang the unreleased ballads "Alaska" and "Lately," about the idea that marriage was a "beautiful and hard" process (Smith has been married for 13 years). Her dynamic control of her vocal performance earned her a rousing ovation.
Andress was disarmingly frank and underscored her roots of being home-schooled in Colorado, then heading to Boston's Berklee College of Music, then decamping for Nashville.
"I was homeschooled around four siblings, seven people in total and some dogs. That's why I'm weird," she deadpanned. Andress has achieved success with Charli XCX's plainspoken 2019 pop hit "Boys" and for her own 2020 breakout country single "Lady Like." She confessed that the torch song's lyrics "Kiss you like a whiskey fire / Turn around, leave your heart in a riot / Lipstick in a cigarette pack on the dash / I'm a lady like that" weren't entirely self-reflective.
"It's like songwriter confessions up here," Andress joked. "So, just to let you all know, I don't smoke. I had to find a rhyme."
As for the trio's most powerful hits to date, Andress' Sam Hunt duet "Wishful Drinking" and hit solo ballad "More Hearts Than Mine," Smith's strong single "High," and Wilson's "Heart Like A Truck" and award-winning "Things A Man Oughta Know" all delivered. Regarding the latter — a smash that took 16 months to reach country radio's airplay pinnacle — Wilson noted, "I hope this song still teaches people to have the courage and discernment to be nice to each other."
Regarding the evening in full, Smith's earnest, wide-eyed and excited exclamation summed up the mood of the appreciative room:
"I've laughed and cried because your art is magical and so good."
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Ingrid Andress, Caitlyn Smith, Lainey Wilson showcase star-making songs
